


Balance

by patternofdefiance



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Trigger Warning: ritualistic cutting, not exactly self harm, these are good characters not good people, trigger warning: blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patternofdefiance/pseuds/patternofdefiance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not the first time either of them has seen blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Balance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shayvaalski](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/gifts).



> For Edie, who is sick, and asked for a Siobhan & Tommy drabble. The characters and world belong to her.
> 
> (First time writing these two.)

It’s not the first time either of them has seen blood.

(Tommy is reminded of the first time he _really_ looked at Siobhan. She is at his side, like a cyclone, like a tumultuous gale of thoughts and –)

It’s not the first time either of them has seen blood, but it is the first time they make it happen.

They make it happen together, but in very different ways, Tommy so careful and focused, as if worried he might be doing it wrong –

And Siobhan, like a flame, like a blast radius.

“Cut deeper,” Siobhan insists, and for all her too-thin-youth there is so much blood inside her, just waiting to escape, and she uses the hilt-to-tip slide of the blade, the way her Dad taught her back when he still had sharp things to teach her – she uses that slide and cuts an escape route for Tommy’s blood.

It had been her idea.

(Of course it would be her idea. They were all her ideas.)

They are spilling each other’s blood. It could be seen as a bonding ritual, it could be seen as a show of trust, _I will_ let _you cut me_ , but the truth is far more pragmatic:

Siobhan needs to know what it feels like to be cut, because she’s seen Mum’s scars, and Dad won’t speak of it. (She also needs to know that Tommy will follow her orders, but this is something she feels rather than acknowledges outright, at least not now with her dark hair in twin braids and her knees bearing scrapes.)

Tommy needs Siobhan to know he will do this thing for her as long as she balances it out with steel against his arm. Mirrors have always held a certain fascination for his thoughts. The heels of their palms will be small reflections of each other now, separated by the thick or thin glass of distance, always but _not_ _quite_ touching.

(Perfect.)

Tommy makes his careful cut deeper, and Siobhan’s elegant aggression against his flesh is equal yet opposite. Siobhan’s breathing, so ragged when they started, calms, and Tommy’s speeds up to catch the slack. Their blood is mixing with the Irish dust beneath their feet.

It could be old magic, or it could just be the copper smell of metal and hemoglobin, a familiar all their days.


End file.
